More-than-Human Frameworks, Figures and Personas in Design View Digital Media

Colloquium
Nicolás Diaz,  Craig Jeffcott,  David Sanchez Ruano,  Eva Monestier  

Design has long relied on conceptual characters as tools to frame speculative spaces; yet, these constructs remain deeply entrenched in anthropocentric assumptions, being generally conceived as human-like personas. This colloquium challenges these limitations, asking: Can these frameworks escape its anthropocentric roots? Could more than human entities embody the Idiot, or the Poet? Could the Strange Strangers represent conceptual figures beyond the human? By reframing conceptual characters as conceptual figures as more-than-human personas, this colloquium seeks to uncover new pathways for rethinking relationality, agency, and ecological interdependence. What does it mean for water to act as an idiot, resisting human-centered logics by asserting its material entanglements and ecological agency? How might minerals become poets crafting speculative possibilities that interlace technological and ecological futures? And what happens when we encounter all beings as strange strangers, that confront with their radical otherness, challenging the limits of human understanding and relational capacity? By asking these questions this Colloquium reflects on the thinking-feeling-doing continuum as a form of post-anthropocentric creative action, emphasizing the inseparability of cognitive, affective, and material engagements in design. By decentering human agency we interrogate how design can meaningfully engage with ecological complexities and invite non-human entities to shape futures that go beyond anthropocentric narratives. Bridging speculative design, ecological theory, and more-than-human relationality, this colloquium offers a framework for reimagining design practices that respect and include the rich, unpredictable agency of non-human actors.